


Should You Lack The Iron

by Fiercest



Category: Bleach
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-09 14:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11106702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiercest/pseuds/Fiercest
Summary: Drabbles and Short Fics xposted from tumblr // Her body is new but Rukia is very old.





	1. Sharing Different Heartbeats

**Author's Note:**

> This is both an entry for @deathberryprompts ‘old’ and a personal entry in Fics Inspired By This Song. I substitute canon with my own vague reality.

****Her gigai is unblemished. And that is perhaps the thing that is most foreign about this body. Peachy skin, unrippled, untouched.

Her hands have no callouses. They’re soft, like they’ve never been before. She didn’t know that hands could be soft until she met Ichigo. His hands are soft too, it’s his knuckles that are cracked and split, like mud baking in the sun.

This body is new, but Rukia is very old.

When the Kurosaki household is empty and she takes her allotted bath, she glances in the mirror. Her back is a blank canvas.

There used to be scars from her days in Rukongai. On two of the three occasions she’d been caught stealing, the punishment had been lashes. She’d borne them with dignity and she continued to bear the scars in the same manner. Now they lurk beneath the surface, under a veneer of lies and youth.

There used to be freckles on the bridge of her nose. She’d lived a life in the sun, unshielded and unguarded. She wondered if she lived her life the same way here, would they would return?

* * *

When it’s all over and the tides have washed away the debris of finales, Rukia sits upright in bed.

The covers pool around her hips and the evening chill sneaks in through the open window. Goosebumps and nightmares make mountains out of molehills in the night.

Beside her, a man very prone to moving mountains stirs. “What’s going on?” he asks in a husky voice.

Rukia smiles fondly and caresses his face. The callouses on her fingers catch on the stubble and create delicious, grounding friction. “Shhh, go back to sleep.”

He catches her hand and presses it into his cheek as if he can bring her into him. Her hands are cold, but his are so so warm. “Can’t. You’re thinking too loud.”

“Idiot,” she says fondly.

“What’s botherin’ you?”

Rukia kisses him then, for all the times that she could not. For all the times she wanted to but didn’t. _For all the time they wasted and the opportunities squandered and the years gone by._ For all the tears and blood shed without hesitation. For what they have now, and for what they will always have.

She laces her fingers together with the hand holding hers and brings them to rest, right at her clavicle, above her heart. There is the beginning of a scar. It winds all around her body in two enormous crescent moons; remnants of an enormous set of jaws.

“It’s nothing. An old wound.”


	2. should you lack the iron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karin stays in her lane. Except when she can't.

Karin can’t be bothered to worry about the strange girl Ichigo keeps in his closet. She’s the type of girl to stay in her lane, bury her head in the sand and forcefully move the Ouija board in another direction- Even though the ghost of Homura-san is Very Displeased with her because of it. The other girls at the slumber party should thank her.

But eventually, even Karin has to notice the changes in her brother. He laughs more these days, though his life has never been harder. He takes more of an interest in her- though she could do without it. He’s all around better. She wonders why that is.

Until she doesn’t have to wonder anymore.

Karin can’t be bothered to worry about the strange girl that Ichigo brought home with him. Goatface seems to like her a lot, but Karin knows a liar when she sees one and it’s none of her business. She just stays out of her way.

But eventually, even Karin has to notice the way the chipper smile cracks at the edges. Rukia is a melancholy woman at the oddest times. If there’s more to the stranger than bunnies and kicking Ichigo in the shin then, well, good for her, but it’s not for Karin to worry about.

Until it is.

There’s a war on and Karin’s older brother is on the precipice, toppling over from life into death and Karin wonders if that will finally make him happy.  
  
That is something Karin worries about constantly.


End file.
